Never the Golden Boy
by AutumnAgain
Summary: Draco wanted to get away from Wizarding Britain. Unfortunately for him, Central City has just as many problems. The obligatory Julian Albert is secretly Draco Malfoy fic.


_A/N: I own neither Harry Potter nor the Flash. There are probably already several stories with this premise, but it had to be done._

Draco Malfoy was better than muggles. He was a pureblood; magic had been in his family for as long as anyone could remember. He could do things that muggles could never hope to imagine with barely a wave of his wand. He was born into luxury, scion to one of the oldest pureblood houses and unquestioned prince of Slytherin House. He was the best: better than mudbloods and blood traitors and half-breeds, better than Harry Potter, the Golden Boy of Gryffindor. Draco was special. He was chosen. Everything was as it should be. For the first fourteen years of his life, he never really doubted that.

Then the war happened, and it all fell to pieces. His father was thrown in jail, his vaults confiscated, his name smeared. They fought, and they lost, and by the end Draco wasn't even sure why anything they had fought for mattered. The Lord his family served was a monster, one who invaded their home and tortured his servants and instilled as much fear in them as the muggles they were meant to be terrorizing. His mother went so far as to betrayed him, if only for Draco's sake, but that didn't matter in light of decades of service, not to the public. Even months after, Draco couldn't go into Diagon Alley without a glamour if he didn't want to be harassed by people calling him a monster and blaming him for what had happened to their families.

Draco had always had a casual interest in muggle science, mostly because it made no sense to him how they could create a system with no room for magic without feeling like anything was missing. It had started simply; things like looking up the scientific names for things to help him work on his Latin, or studying the laws of force to help perfect his hover charm. (He'd run into Granger once, in the tiny muggle section of the library. She'd looked at the physics book in his arms, and he'd said something insulting and left as quickly as he could without sacrificing his dignity. She'd never brought it up, thank Merlin, but it had still been embarrassing). His parents had been a little confused, especially when he requested a trip to the nearest muggle bookstore for research purposes, but they'd let it go when he told them it was for the purpose of putting that Granger girl in her place. What better way to prove the inherent superiority of wizards than to beat the muggles at their own game?

When the war ended, Draco had fallen back into his old habits. He'd spent days inside, reading every scientific text he could find. His mother worried, but he needed an escape. He needed to be someone else for a while, someone no one would suspect of being a Death Eater, and if he was going to disguise himself as a muggle he certainly wouldn't be one of those fools wandering about in a dressing gown and galoshes. He would do his research, and he would be the best, especially without Potter and his friends around to show him up.

His initial papers were faked, but his degree was real, earned the hard way through years of study surrounded by muggles who had no idea how much more powerful he was than them. Some of them were surprisingly tolerable, but there were plenty who made Weasley look like pleasant company, and "Julian Albert" developed a reputation for being rather standoffish and cold. Draco didn't mind; it kept the riffraff away, and gave him more time to focus on his work.

Julian was a bright young CSI, in the top of his field. He was the best, even without using his magic, and while he still carried his wand he'd nearly trained himself out of the instinct to reach for it at the slightest provocation. He had finally begun to move past the war when everything changed again.

Metahumans weren't wizards. They didn't need wands or potions to do what they did. They didn't have to work for it, not like Draco had (and Granger, loathe as he was to admit it). They were like magical creatures, but without the laws and systems set up over the centuries to keep them in check. Muggles couldn't hold them, not really, and wizards had no authority over them. They squandered their gifts, used them for petty things like bank robberies and half-baked revenge plots when they could do so much more, dancing around as if their very existence didn't violate every rule he'd ever learned, both in science and magic.

And among them all, loved and heroic and oh-so-special, was the Flash. He was just like Potter, gallivanting along without a care, as though the world revolved around him. Everything came easy to the Flash, just like it had to Potter, and yes, Draco had been born to privilege, but he had worked to keep it. He had studied while Potter slacked, had kept Crabbe and Goyle from failing while Potter copied off of Granger, had kept himself composed and beyond reproach in his dealings with his House until his position was secure. During the war, he had sacrificed everything to survive, had worked for a year to redeem his family's reputation, had lived every day in fear of reprisal while everyone outside hated him. Everyone loved Potter; even when he was missing they looked to him as a savior. Everything came easy to Potter, from casting a corporeal patronus to coming back from the dead. He watched the Flash reveal yet another new power to an adoring public, and he fought the urge to slap on a disillusionment charm and hex him into oblivion.

Julian switched his focus from ordinary crime to metahumans, and within two years he was employed as the CCPD's metahuman specialist. He was a wizard, still, but without a wand he was as weak as any muggle. It simply wasn't fair, and while Draco had learned a long time ago that life wasn't fair this was beyond the pale. Draco hated metahumans and he envied them. It brought him great pleasure to take them down.

There was only one problem with his new job, besides the obnoxious Flash fans on every corner: Barry Allen. The Golden Boy of the CCPD. Detective West's foster son. Captain Singh's favorite. The CSI who could do no wrong, never mind his chronic tardiness and unexplained absences. It was like the rules didn't apply to him, and he didn't even notice. He was just like Potter, totally oblivious of how everyone went out of their way to pay attention to him. West doted on him while he brooded over his dead parents, and Draco thought of his own father's aloofness, of McGonagall always taking Potter's side. He heard Allen complain about him, to constant agreement, and remembered being turned into a ferret by someone who was meant to look after him (the revelation that Moody had been a Death Eater getting revenge for Lucius escaping trial had only made it worse, and Draco was oddly comforted by the reminder that at least here he was only hated for himself). Singh brushed off Julian to listen to Allen, and Draco thought of Dumbledore calling Potter to his office constantly, giving hundreds of points to Gryffindor just to punish Slytherin. Everyone loved Allen, and he had no idea how lucky he was.

Sometimes, even though he was in America, surrounded by muggles, Draco felt like he was back at Hogwarts.


End file.
